


The Ultimates vs. Honey and the Bees

by bactaqueen



Category: Marvel Ultimates
Genre: Gen, Hank Pym is always the villain, crack!fic, full-body honey wax, giant honey bees, setting up a crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 15:02:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5421467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bactaqueen/pseuds/bactaqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hank Pym's mistake has come back to drown the Ultimates in honey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ultimates vs. Honey and the Bees

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** This is a work of fiction. Recognizable characters belong to their respective owners. No profit is earned and no infringement is intended.
> 
> **Author's Note:** Inspired by an imagineyouricon post I suddenly can't find.

Steve flung the shield and listened for the hollow ringing as it hit the wall and another corner, then jumped straight up to catch it in mid-air. He had been in the mansion gym since well before anyone else (except for Tony's staff, of course) was awake, throwing the shield, running, lifting, and he was finally starting to feel less likely to punch something if he ventured into the common areas.

Not something.  _Someone._

Tony had agreed to let Pym serve out his sentence under house arrest in the mansion.

Last night, Steve discovered that Jan had moved her things from her room down to the cushy "cell" Pym was using.

Before he could start brooding about that again--the whole reason he was down in the gym trying to exhaust himself in the first place--his comm chirped.

"Rogers."

"Steve, we have a problem."

He threw the shield one more time as hard as he could, so hard that when it hit the wall it sent up a spray of brick dust, and he snatched it out of the air on its way back. His hand hurt and his bones rattled.

"Good."

"...I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that."

"What do I get to hit?"

"A giant bee lady."

***

"Estimates put her at twenty feet tall, weight around half a ton."

Steve tugged his gloves on tight and secured the strap hidden under the pocket on his forearm. "Who do we have out there already?"

"Wasp, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, and Hawkeye."

He nodded. Good. That was a team he could work with.

Carol went on, "She's headed straight for the mansion. We're trying to figure out who she is, where she came from, and what she wants, but for right now--"

Steve didn't need to hear the orders. "Stop her. Got it." He tugged at his chinstrap to test it, and mer Carol's eyes. "Anything else?"

She pursed her lips and bit back whatever smartass remark she wanted to give him in favor of actual intelligence. "Don't let the human-sized bees spit on you," she said wryly. "Looks like their honey is paralytic and we're not sure what it'll do to you."

Steve blinked at her. "Spit on me?"

Her smirk twisted. "Do you know how bees make honey, Cap?"

He could  _feel_ the expression on his face and knew that if Tony could capture the image to razz him about later, he would. He just couldn't help it. "I have some idea."

Carol shook herself and glanced down at the information scrolling across her tablet. "As far as we can tell, their honey stomachs are full of something that looks like honey, smells like honey, and has already put twenty-two people in the hospital unable to move."

"Twenty-two." That was a lot of civilian casualties. Of all the weird things he'd seen since he signed up...

Carol's mouth firmed and her expression was grim. "We've lost six agents, Steve. Don't be another one."

"Thanks."

"We can only offer long-range air support. Queen Bee keeps spitting at our choppers and we're concerned about how fast the workers can fly."

Steve cocked a brow. "Fly?"

"They  _all_ fly."

Of course they did. He sighed through his nose and said, "Just stand by."

Carol scowled. "Captain--"

Steve cupped a hand up around his ear as though he couldn't hear her, shrugged, and pushed through the last set of doors in the entrance vestibule, out into the spring sunshine, straight into chaos.

There was a long, long walkway between the front door of the mansion and the gate set into the stone wall that separated the private property from the street, and the ten-foot wall was lined on both sides with trees, but Steve could still hear the panic. He took a running leap and vaulted over the wall, and he landed on the sidewalk on the other side neatly... until he nearly got trampled by a tall woman in high heels running for her life.

"Watch it, lady," he snapped, and a buzzing sound behind him made him spin.

He got the shield up just in time to block the stream of paralyzing honey-spit. While the bee's mouth was still open, he rushed it, knocking it flat to its back. He straddled it, trying not to be disgusted by the skittering feel of the insect legs scrabbling at his thighs and sides, and brought the shield up to use as a knife edge.

It opened its mouth again and shrieked. It beat its wings furiously at the ground. He felt the rumbling in its middle--her thorax? her stomach? what did he even know about bee anatomy?--below his crotch and shifted the angle of the shield to protect himself and reflect the stream of honey back at her.

In the next blink, he was twenty feet away from her, swaying on his feet, his ears ringing and the world coming back into focus.

Pietro glared at him. "Do not take such foolish risks, Captain."

Steve opened his mouth to protest, then thought better of it. He grunted. "Thanks, Maximoff."

He looked up and down the street and saw Wanda nearby with her arms up. He thought that was the bee that had attacked him in the air, caught in Wanda's magic, folding in half and half again.

It shrieked and flailed and finally died, crushed in on itself.

"Good work, Wanda." At a slow jog, he started toward the main avenue that connected to their street. "Keep it up. Help Quicksilver get people to safety."

They didn't even acknowledge the order. Wanda turned her magic toward the running, screaming civilians, and Quicksilver shot off, too fast to see. Steve saw people whisked out of the way, saw the bewildered and dazed looks on their faces, and knew he was doing his job, too.

"Hawkeye."

"Here, Cap."

"Where's Wasp?"

"Where the hell have you been?"

_Not sleeping with a traitor and a murderer, that's for damn sure._ Steve gritted his teeth and picked up the pace. "I want the two of you to take out the workers. Don't let them paralyze anyone else."

"Copy that," said Hawkeye.

And Wasp didn't turn off her mic before she muttered, "What do you think we've been doing?"

Steve did not press his fingers to his eyes or pinch the bridge of his nose even though he felt the headache coming on. He just ran full-tilt toward the sounds of the most destruction.

Before he could ask for specific coordinates, his comm crackled and Carol's voice filled his head. "She's headed straight for the mansion on the street you're on. She's got a swarm. We've got a bee expert in here saying that means they're looking for a nest--best guess, she wants the mansion."

"Why is that your best guess?"

"Because  _all_ of these monsters want the Ultimates."

She had a point.

"How's the evacuation going?" He needed to know just how worried he should be about civilians.

"Wanda and Pietro are moving closer to her. Looks like..." Carol trailed off and paused. "Ninety-percent clear within the first hundred meters, sixty-five percent clear the next hundred, and thirty percent clear after that."

Steve grunted. "I don't like those numbers, Danvers."

"Then do something about the threat, Rogers."

_That's the plan._

Steve dodged a worker and threw his shield at another; an explosion flared behind him hot on the back of his neck between the uniform collar and his helmet, and when he looked over his shoulder, Jan was hovering a few feet off the ground, wings beating. She was still fullsize, probably to combat the human-size bees, and Steve approved of the strategy.

What he  _didn't_ approve of was the save.

"I'm fine," he snapped at her, annoyed; he would have caught the one on his six before it had time to spit on him. "Worry about the civilians."

Jan's eyes narrowed. "We're a team, Steve."

"And I'm the team leader, telling you to worry about the civilians."

She gave him a dirty look, then lifted higher and darted forward. "Fine. Just save the big one for yourself, you selfish jerk."

"Who else is going to get her?" Steve wondered out loud. Wasn't that always how it worked? Eventually, he got the big one; what was the point sending anyone else after her if he was the one who would have to end it, anyway?

All right, so things in the team weren't as good as they could have been.

Steve cleared a few more blocks, smashing the shield into bee faces and using the edge of it to separate heads from bodies as he went, rescuing fleeing people from the center of the street and shoving them toward the buildings so at least they had some cover.

Finally, the queen came into view, and he nearly stumbled on a discarded shoe.

She was like her drones and her workers, but four times their size, distinctly half-bee and half-woman where her drones were just oversized bees. Her legs and arms were black and matched the insect legs sprouting from her middle--that was bare, and covered in yellow fuzz, and looked more like a thorax. Behind her, drones carried between them a vat, and more workers--workers not involved in the fight to advance their position--were filling it.

"I see the queen."

_She's disgusting._

Carol's voice when she spoke was quiet and resigned. "Cap, Dr. Pym wants to join the fight."

_Why? So he could switch sides halfway through?_ "We don't need him."

Carol hesitated much longer than made Steve comfortable. "He says he thinks this is his fault," she finally said.

Steve shut off his comm, smashed his shield into one bee so hart she flew back against a building and splattered, and cut another one in half. Of course Pym was involved.  _Of course he was._

He switched his comm back on and carefully controlled his tone and his words. "Why does he say that?"

"During initial real-world trials for his Ant-Man helmet, he sent ants after some bee hives outside of the city. Turns out they were part of a scientific study. The scientist in charge dropped out after all the bees in the hives died, including the queens, and he saw her when he was working with the Liberators--"

The Liberators. Steve scowled. "This is definitely his fault."

"Steve." Carol's voice held a warning.

But she was basically powerless if he decided he didn't want to listen to her.

"Have him tell you everything," Steve said. "Who she is, where she came from, what research she had access to, and then arrest him."

"He's already under house arrest, Steve," Carol reminded him.

He knew that, damn it, he knew that! He threw the shield at a trio of bees headed straight down the middle of the avenue. "Then put a bow on him and bring him out here, I'll hand him over to the Queen myself!"

" Steve ."  _You are not helping_ was implied.

"Fine. Put him somewhere he can't hurt anything else and someone else can figure out what to do with him after we've saved the city." He still really liked the idea of handing him over to the bee-lady. Maybe she could puke on him and paralyze him and then they wouldn't have to worry about him getting up and wreaking havoc ever again.

There was the sound of paperwork shuffled, then Carol said, "I'll have him moved to another holding facility."  _And I'm not telling you where it is because I don't want you to kill him._

Still, Steve wasn't totally heartless. "Don't forget to tell Jan."

"I hardly think--"

He cut Carol off and opened his private connection to Tony. "Stark."

"I'm ready and waiting for you, o captain my captain. I thought you were going to leave me out of the fun."

Steve winced. Tony was trying to sound like himself, but Steve could hear how exhausted he was. He was willing to bet the man was still in bed, hooked up to IVs and annoying his nurses.

But just because his body wasn't cooperating didn't mean they couldn't use his mind.

"What have you got for me?" Steve wanted to know.

"What do you need?"

_Five minutes alone with Hank Pym._ That wasn't at all helpful. He'd had a niggling thought since Carol had said bees and brought it up. "Don't beekeepers use smokers?" He was close enough to the big girl now to smell the honey in the vat and for his bones to thrum with the buzzing of the swarm. He wasn't unsympathetic to the woman she used to be. Seeing everything she'd worked for destroyed by one selfish dick in a stupid helmet had to be enough to send her over the edge. But she wasn't taking prisoners and Steve was starting to suspect he knew what her endgame was. "Can you get me something to use on the workers?"

"I can buy Marlboro," Tony offered.

"Tony." Steve didn't have to think about the edge of warning in his voice, it just happened.

"That was funny," Tony insisted, indignant.

The worker bees were thicker here, woman-sized and unnerving, buzzing and vomiting and splatting to the ground when someone--Wasp with her stingers, Hawkeye with his arrows, Steve with his fists and the shield--killed them.

There were no civilians, though, and that was what mattered most.

"Get me  _something_ , Tony, and then stand by."

"Standing isn't happening today."

Steve grunted. He shouldn't laugh, but Tony made it so difficult. "You know what I mean."

"I do. So, hey, there's quite the fuss downstairs. Some intimidating young men in SHIELD riot gear are trying to remove our dear Dr. Pym from his lab. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you? I only ask because I know you've been trying to get rid of him and offering him up as a sacrifice to a giant queen bee is certainly inventive, but not exactly your style."

"Our queen bee is a lady scientist. Pym killed her bees so she stole his research--"

"Say no more." Tony paused. "I have to admire her dedication."

Steve couldn't disagree. "Carol said I can't kill him, anyway."

"Well, he  _is_ very useful."

"As a punching bag."

"I meant that his science--"

Steve knew damn well what he meant and didn't want to hear any of it. "Tony."

"Oh, all right. I'll get you some kind of giant smoking gun."

"Thank you."

Tony disconnected without any of his usual quips or endearments, no doubt lost in thought about the mechanics of the problem.

The swarm got thicker and louder as Steve got closer to the queen. It didn't seem to matter how many Steve took out, or how many Hawkeye felled, or how many Wasp zapped, there were still too many to count, too many to fight. He kept pushing. She was the key. Steve couldn't remember if he'd ever learned how bees reacted when they lost their queen, but he knew how soldiers reacted when they lost their leader, and in any case, her size alone made her his number one target.

He kept moving, dodging honey vomit and stingers and wings--the wings, he'd discovered, could knock him back if they caught him off guard--and falling bodies. Until, finally, he broke through the swarm, into the empty space ten meters in front of the queen.

She saw him and buzzed her wings. The thrum all around him rose up. The drones carrying the vat between them shifted direction and elevation. Then the vat tipped, and honey splashed over the top, spilled over the street. Steve planted his feet but it wasn't good enough; the three-food wave of honey knocked his legs out from beneath him and he was swept back half a block before he got his bearings.

He flashed back to stories his mother used to tell, passed on from family in Boston from just before he was born.

"I know what the plan is," he told Carol as he regained his feet.

"They're paralyzing victims before they drown them in the honey." She sounded grim.

For good reason. This was something new and different and if they couldn't stop this... Steve wiped the honey out of his eyes and readjusted his helmet and the shield on his arm. "I think so."

Carol swore.

Steve darted toward the office building closest to him and tried the door. It was locked, so he smashed through it. He found the emergency stairwell and shoved into it, setting off the alarm, and he listened to the commotion back in the command center because Carol had forgotten to turn off her mic.

It sounded like Tony's smokers were ready, or close to it.

_Good._

Steve raced up three flights of stairs. The queen was only twenty feet tall, he didn't need to be any higher than that. He barreled through the cubicle farm and threw himself at the bank of windows overlooking the street. There she was, several feet down and right in front of him. Perfect.

Workers and drones flew at him, but Steve pulled his legs up and grabbed the first one that came close enough. It sank under his weight, but he only needed it for a moment. He shoved off, launching himself at the queen's thorax.

He caught fistfuls of the soft yellow fuzz that covered her body. She shrieked and batted at him with the insect legs at her middle. He knocked them away with the shield and kept climbing.

"Someone tell me something about bee anatomy!"

The queen's wings flapped so hard he felt the buzz in his bones, and then drones were on him, flying straight into him to try to knock him off, beating at him with their wings. He held on tight to her with one hand and waved the shield, trying to clear them away. But she started to thrash, and his grip slipped, and before he could get an answer, he was falling.

The backs of his knees clipped the edge of the vat and he hit the honey head-first in a backwards dive.

Steve fought frantically back to the top and surfaced, gasping in a lungful of honey-sweetened air. He ripped off his helmet, honey coating his hair and squishing into his eyes, behind his ears, and he threw it out of the vat. Kicking his legs, he struggled to get his shield on his back so his hands would be free. Honey was in his nose and in his mouth and sliding down his throat. He coughed and spat and sneezed and wiped it from his eyes. He clawed at the honey, kicked, swimming desperately to the edge of the vat. Honey soaked through the uniform, slid down the collar of his top, seeped down his boots and gloves.

He was glad they hadn't filled the vat with the paralyzing honey.

He hauled himself up onto the rim of the vat. He could feel honey in his boots, between his toes. He could feel it around his fingers inside his gloves, and in his pants inside his underwear, and in the top of his uniform soaked through his undershirt and sticky against his skin. He shoved his hair back from his face. It smelled better than blood and entrails, at least. And the sun had kept it warm. He could fight through this.

He pulled his shield off his back and tightened the straps.

"Hawkeye, Wasp, I want you to keep the workers and the drones off of me." He spread his feet on the vat rim and braced to jump. "Someone give me something on bee anatomy."

"There's a ventral nervous system," Carol came back immediately. "Steve, are you all right?"

He smelled like breakfast. The question wasn't worth answering. "How deep is it?"

"You should be able to sever it with your tactical knife."

"Good enough for me."

He launched himself off the vat and landed on her once more. She shrieked and buzzed her wings, but this time, Hawkeye kept up a steady stream of arrows and some of Wasp's stings hit so close Steve could feel the change in the air. It didn't matter. As long as they bought him some time.

He unsheathed the tactical knife and clung hard to her fuzz with his shield hand. He hid under it, refuge from the falling bees and paralyzing spit, and he started stabbing. Ventral, he thought, meant underside; probably it ran straight down the middle of her. He hoped she was bee enough to have changed that much. He stabbed into her thorax as deep as he could and dragged the knife back out, twisting as he went.

The queen screamed and thrashed her wings. She realized that her workers and her drones were doing nothing to protect her; she started beating at him with her arms, the little hairs and suckers on her forearms stinging his face and neck.

He lashed out with the tactical blade, hacking. He managed to sever two arms. She screamed and shuddered.

Steve stabbed her thorax again, as deep as the knife would go, then deeper, until nearly his whole arm was inside her. The honey seemed to protect him from her guts. He slashed and sliced and prayed he'd find what he was looking for in a hurry.

She began to twitch and spasm.

"I think you found it," Jan said, and in his ear she sounded pained.

This couldn't be easy for her, and if he wasn't shoulder-deep in a bee hellbent on killing him, he'd have felt bad for her.

Instead, he just said, "Someone do something about her head so we can end this."

"On it," Hawkeye said. "Stay under your shield."

"Hawkeye!" Carol snapped.

"It'll only be a little explosion, boss, don't worry," he assured her.

His tone was  _not at all_ reassuring. Steve drew his legs up and tucked himself in tight under the shield. He pulled his arm out of the queen's thorax but he held on to the knife. Just in case.

He heard the whip of the arrow through the air and counted to three. The  _boom_ rattled his teeth and the heat washed over him, even around the shield. The queen swayed and began to fall.

Steve took his chance, braced his feet against her thorax, and leaped away. He somersaulted once to right himself and landed heavily on his feet, fifteen feet down. He watched her sway back, forth, and knew the moment before it happened that she would hit the vat and spill honey all over the street. He tried to run, but he wasn't fast enough.

There was enough honey to wash over him, higher than his head, and roll him along. His face scraped the asphalt.

Then he was lifted out of the honey, held by an invisible hand. He wiped his eyes clean and looked to find Wanda floating mid-air between the buildings, over the road. Her hands were up and her racy skirts billowed around her. She smirked at him.

He coughed up a lungful of warm honey. "Thanks," he said. "If you could just put me down..."

"Of course, Captain." She floated him toward the nearest rooftop.

He only fell about two feet from where she released him. He gave her a two-finger salute. "Thanks."

Carol's voice crackled in his ear. "Cleanup is on its way."

Steve was about to ask about the smokers--he didn't smell anything--when he noticed the shimmering red orb over the street.

The shimmering red orb filled with very angry bees.

He had no idea Wanda was capable of that. He looked at her again. "Good work, Wanda."

"Thank you, Captain."

"Good work everyone." Steve pushed his hair back where it had fallen over his forehead as the rooftop began to rumble with the sound of the choppers approaching from the mansion.

The whole street reeked of honey. The air was thick with the taste of it. He was starting to feel ill. He'd swallowed more than a few mouthfuls.

"I need a ride back," he said over the comm. His uniform was starting to feel stiff, the honey soaking it drying in the sun and the breeze. It was sticky on his face and neck and ears and it was starting to get uncomfortable. "I'm going to shower before the debriefing."

As soon as he'd spoken, a chopper appeared over his position. One of the rescue ladders dropped down to him.

It wasn't a SHIELD helicopter, though; it was one of Tony's private fleet.

When Steve's comm came to life, it was Tony. "You definitely need a shower, honey."

"Funny." Steve put his shield on his back and grabbed the ladder. "Thanks."

"Word of advice? And I'm speaking from experience, here, Cap, so please trust me. Get in the shower fully clothed. Wait until you've soaked in hot water before you take anything off."

Steve frowned as he climbed. He didn't trust that this wasn't one of Tony's jokes.  _Ha ha, look at the old man, too square to take his clothes off to shower._ "I can clean myself up just fine on my own, Tony."

"Please, Steve, trust me on this one. Take my advice."

***

Steve did not take Tony's advice.

His first clue was the pain. Or, rather, it should have been, but he didn't understand what it meant. He worried, as he peeled off the top of his uniform and the tearing, burning sensation crawled down his arms and up his chest, that he'd been injured and hadn't realized it.

It wasn't until he toed off his boots and peeled off his pants and looked down that he understood.

He regretted not listening to Tony.

Every strand of body hair had been ripped from his skin and was stuck, disgustingly, unnervingly, to the inside of his uniform. When he looked down at himself, he was completely hairless: chest, arms, legs, crotch.

He dropped his uniform, grabbed his things, and ran for the showers. He needed to get cleaned up and dressed before anyone saw him like this, like some kind of hairless rat.

Like a  _woman_ .

He stuck his head under the hot water and washed out the honey. He washed away the silent, gelid tears of shocking pain, tears he would never admit to no matter how much longer he lived.

Women these days did this  _on purpose_ to themselves. He'd seen the results.

There was nothing in the world, no man's opinion, worth this much pain.

(Tony had known. Tony had done this to himself on purpose, too, and if he had, suddenly the men on the fitness magazines and TV made so much more sense.)

Steve rushed through a shower, avoiding touching his own skin as much as possible--it was too sensitive, too slick under his soap--and he hurried to dry off and dress.

His clothes felt weird.

In the conference room, the first thing he noticed was the big screen plastered with Pym's face. Steve couldn't help the curled lip or the reflexive clenched fists, despite Carol's warning glower. He took a place against the wall near the door, arms crossed over his chest, and he hoped no one noticed how he kept fidgeting. He leveled his most intimidating stare at Carol and waited.

If this debriefing and Pym's smug face offered nothing else, he hoped for answers.

But he never got them.

A narrow diamond of emptiness opened up beside him. Steve heard a woman's voice.

"Captain, I need you to come with me."

His eyes darted around the room, but no one else seemed to notice the diamond or hear the voice.

"Excuse me?"

The woman's voice came again. "I'll explain as soon as you get here. We need your help."

"I don't--"

That was all the protest he managed. In the next instant, he was sucked into the diamond. It was warm and wet and smelled elusively familiar.

Then there was a light and the sense of falling.

"Thank you, Captain."

 


End file.
